 |
| [ Introduction ] |
Born in Asahikawa, Hokkaido on August 13, 1905, Nambata Tatsuoki gained a fascination for art through a fortuitous encounter with poet and sculptor Takamura Kotaro. In the late 1920s, he set his heart on becoming a painter. After the World War II, he turned his talents to abstract painting, exploring the construction of images evoked purely by lines and colours.
Nambata died in 1997 at the age of ninety-two after long and eventful life. Particularly significant was the death of his two sons in successive years when he was about seventy years old — beginning with his second son Fumio, aged thirty-two, and followed by his oldest son, Norio, aged thirty-five. Both had also been artists. It took Tatsuoki some time to get over the shock and anguish of their loss, but afterwards, his work had a new focus, achieving a distinctive mood that conveyed serene, lucid scenery from within his mind, imbued with a deep spirituality.
Determined to keep on painting until he could paint no more, Nambata was highly driven. He completed his large masterpiece, Record of Life, at the age of eighty-eight, and continued to create to the very end, producing a diary of pen-drawings from his hospital bed.
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery also held a major retrospective for Nambata, titled Nambata Tatsuoki: Symphony of Life—Creation and Development of Japanese Abstraction in its opening year, 1999. To mark Nambata’s centennial year, the Art Gallery has planned an exhibition that celebrates his life, tracking his life and art through his works and other exhibits.
The breadth of this exhibition comes from works in the Tokyo Opera City collection donated by Terada Kotaro. The depth comes from items retained by his family, including documents relating to Tatsuoki’s father, Nambata Noriyoshi, the young Tatsuoki’s diaries and poems, a collection of letters to Tatsuoki by Takamura Kotaro, previously unexhibited sketchbooks and personal items from his studio. Together they allow a comprehensive look back at the Nambata Tatsuoki, the painter, and the individual, revealing hitherto unknown background to the artist’s creativity.
In parallel with this exhibition, Galleries 3 and 4 present From the Terada Collection 018: NAMBATA Fumio, a solo exhibition of works by Tatsuoki’s second son, enabling the dedication of both painters, father and son, to their work to be experienced concurrently through their respective oeuvres.
|
|
|
